First thing I'll say is, the new intro is awesome. It's a bit poor in resolution in a few places, but otherwise, has a really great cardboard feel and a nice callback to the original opening (though I'm a bit disappointed that they didn't remix the South Park theme again).

As for the actual episode, it wasn't bad, just really boring. The NSA plot mostly just dragged along without anything really happening until Santa came into it and had the ''nobody cares'' thing. As for the Butters plot, again, really dragged and didn't become that interesting until around the end, just doing obvious Religion comparisons with Butters wining in it. There was a few laughs in it, mostly from Alec Baldwin (voiced by Bill Hader, really happy about that), and the ending with boys being molested at each of the places with worship was pretty great, but otherwise, just a forgettable episode.

Overall: a 2.5/5.

P.S. Two side notes. First, Cartman sounded really off in this episode, almost like Stan or Craig at times. And two, Officer Barbrady had a speaking role in this episode, after years of being stuck as a background character, which is really freaking awesome.

The new intro was fantastic, though I'm a bit surprised they didn't also remix the theme again seeing as they were giving the entire damn thing a makeover. We've had that since, what, season 10 now?

As for the episode itself, it was okay. A few funny moments, though it was one of those episodes where the idea really wasn't enough to sustain 20 minutes of content but they dragged it out anyway. Mind you, South Park has its history of shaky season premieres, so I'm still looking forward to the rest of this season.

I'm also disappointed that they've still got the "Whamola" theme that they've had since season 10, to say that they remixed the theme every 3 or 4 seasons prior to that, but it's been 7 now - but the new intro was really cool.

That's where my praise runs out, though.

It was really dull and what few jokes did land couldn't make up for how stale everything was. Something just felt really off about the whole thing. Did Trey Parker write this one or was it one of the first ones handed over to Bill Hader?

Cartman's voice was noticeably not quite right, and lots of details just felt a bit weird.

Was I missing something with the live-action footage behind them in the car in that shot, for instance? That just felt utterly bizarre and out of place. I know that they did that in season 1, but the animation has changed so much since then that it's sort of like if a crappy Tracy Ullman-animated Homer Simpson appeared in the next episode of The Simpsons.

Anyway, I wasn't at all impressed and given that they've taken a year off to refresh, it's pretty upsetting that this is the best they could give us.

Still, South Park's season premieres are often quite weak compared to the rest of the season - the only real exception to that rule being if it's an episode that they've clearly been working on for a while ahead of it airing such as "Good Times with Weapons" or "Make Love Not Warcraft" (not a season premiere, but it kicked off the start of 10B).

I did like the Santa joke, but that went nowhere. It just fizzled out. And the ending of the episode sucked.

If I'm completely honest, the voice just sounded older, which is completely fair. Trey Parker is a lot older than when they started out. But at the same time, it seemed like the voice got back to normal by the end of the episode. I would say it's probably just me, but I've seen other people mention it sounding a bit different on other forums. I don't have any real complaint about Cartman sounding a tiny bit different, anyway - it just added to a whole sense of the entire episode being slightly askew.

I thought it was a decent episode, pretty much all of the Alec Baldwin scenes had me laughing, and the twist with Santa was pretty clever imo. The new intro looks cool, but the theme song is way too fast to match up with it. Shitter was cool too.

It sounded a little less guttural than usual in the beginning, but I'm fairly certain they record their lines in a relatively linear order, so I'd probably just attribute it to Trey not having to do the voice for almost a year.

4/10 for me. Hader's Alec Baldwin provided what little laughs there were to be had for me.

However, I'm not too concerned with this as a season opener, because I trust they always get their mojo back mid season and produce something hysterical. Its just the way this show works, and that's cooo

Because of what was said about the episode on this site, I was kind of dreading it. It was nothing special for me. I favored the Butters sub-plot over the Cartman main plot, and I also enjoyed Alec Baldwin's portrayal. The only thing that could have made that funnier is if it had actually been Alec Baldwin. Otherwise, though, I really don't think it was a great start to Season 17. Hopefully next week's episode will be better.

I think Cartman's voice just sounded a bit hoarse. The episode was okay, not great. It had a few pretty good jokes in it and I liked Butters' subplot. I was kind of disappointed that nobody rescued Santa from the NSA headquarters, though. The best part was definitely the new opening, which I thought was really cool.

This, as far as I can tell, it one of the episodes that's been in the works for a little while as opposed to just 6 days prior to airing, and the premise sounds more promising than last time, so I'll go in with high hopes.

Pretty bad episode. The idea of combining a Murder Porn plot with a Minecraft plot really didn't connect well, most of the jokes were overused throughout it (the booo Wendy and nipple jokes got really old after their first uses), and it didn't lead to anything that I couldn't have seen on some other show. I guess I'll give them some credit for at least having some energy in it and trying to do some good jokes, which is a lot more than I can say about the premiere episode, but it's still a pretty meh episode that didn't have much to give.

Well, I just watched "Informative Murder Porn," and I must say it was a bit of an improvement over last week's episode. I found some parts of it to be funny, but I agree that the nipple thing got old fast. It seemed to Family Guy for me.

So I'm giving this episode an 8/10. I would have given it a 7.5/10, but Tweek's back!

Or has he been in the show this whole time? As far as I can remember, he disappeared after Season 6, but I could be wrong. Yet again, my memory is failing me.

Yeah, I've noticed him in the background, but I don't think he's had a speaking role since...Season 6, I think. If this really is his first speaking role since then, I hope he remains a recurring character. He's one of my favorite characters.

He he, this is gonna be raunchy This could be good, maybe not. Sonetimes when it tries to hard to be raunchy, it takes it too far and it isn't funny. For the most part though, I'm hopeful this'll be good, and it doesn't look bad.

I should be getting upset by the potential for this being their 3rd zombie episode, but, instead, I'm really excited for the potential of this being their 3rd zombie episode. I love zombies (although, Word War Z - the film, not the book - was atrocious).

But I imagine that they won't go into zombie territory. They're just going to do something like Cartman being racist and upset about Token being black or rich or something and world-hopping to try and stop it.

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